Ascent of Old Man of Hoy

Here is someone else's video of an ascent of the Old Man.



MM III

Old Man of Hoy

I say!

The lads are doing a great job of lulling the Aussies into a false sense of security over at the Gabba. They fall for it every time. I must say, however, that the two dreadful umpiring decisions that put paid to KP and Freddie Flintoff were probably not in the plan.

I'm afraid that I have a woefully busy itinerary over the next few weeks, and may not be able to blog very regularly. We're preparing for the forthcoming trip to Antigua, and I'm taking the opportunity to drop past London to do some pitch inspection work.

In the meantime, here are a couple more snaps from the Orkney Islands, taken in August of this year.

Here is one of the Cathedral in Kirkwall, where one will find the tomb of John Rae, the Arctic explorer.


And here is one of the Old Man of Hoy, which was climbed recently by an ex-England wicket-keeper. Very impressive.


Just a couple of miles from the 'Old Man' is the village of Rackwick, where the next snap was taken, looking south west alon the shore to impressive crags.


Finally, up the road from Rackwick, and after considerable detective work, I discovered the following conclusive evidence that this is where the Australians have been taking the turf from which to prepare the wicket for the Gabba. No wonder cracks have appeared after only two days.


MM III

Did the vikings play with a straight bat?

I say!

I've heard some people suggest that the vikings won the cricket world cup in 1007 AD. This is, of course, nonsense. There was no cricket world cup in 1007. Whether the vikings played cricket at all is another question, and for my own part, I have so far found no evidence.

I asked this viking, whom I met in a bar in Stromness, in the Orkney Islands, earlier this year, whether he was familiar with the game:

His answer was in the negative. In any case, his bat would be deemed illegal by any discerning umpire.

Vikings are still quite common in the Orkney Islands. In another bar, I asked some more the same question.


They too had not heard of the game.




Late on, after a lovely meal in the Scapa Flow Restaurant and prodigious amounts of wine, when some giants appeared in the bar (they too seem to be quite common thereabouts), it all got too much for me, and I could not press the correct buttons on my camera.

MM III

From the air

I say!

Towards the end of this video (which I found on YouTube) is a view from the air of the cricket pitch at the Ring of Brodgar.



MM III

DC

I say!

Menzies IV just emailed me this snap of his band, playing recently at Nottingham, UK.

What a wonderful drummer he's turned out to be.

MM III

Penguins

My goodness!

Never happened before, not once, but I just spilt an MGT (Malawi gin & tonic)! Caught most of it, fortunately.

I was reading about Apsley Cherry-Garrard, in the 2002 biography by the delectable Sara Wheeler, and his experiences in the Antarctic.

"After the last box of lavatory paper had been counted out, twenty-nine sheets were issued to each man."

As I undestand it, this had to last them two weeks or more, depending on the blizzards. I find it is always uplifting to read about blizzards, when one is suffering from a heat-wave, as we are, in Kalimbuka. Fortunately, for the health, if not the gardens, little humidity.

With respect to early Antarctic exploration, and specifically the emperor penguin, I wonder if Hotboy, Rob McJ or anyone else, has an opinion on 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'? What with their extensive experience of penguins in the UnHeard of Islands, one will expect some terse observations.

MM III

Location revealed

I say!

Thank you very much to everyone who took a stab at guessing the location of last week's quiz question (see below). No one was correct, but the closest was Hotboy, who suggested Stirling, so three cheers for His Holiness, even though Stirling is far inland, and therefore a ludicrous guess. In fact, it was from Stromness, in the Orkney Islands, that Cook, Frankin, and others ventured forth in their quest for new sources of wood from which to sculpt cricket bats.

In the time since they were keen cricketers, the inhabitants of Stromness have gone downhill rather, as can be seen from the snap below, taken outside the Stromness Hotel, on my visit there earlier this year. With his height, the gentleman in the white might have made an excellent fast bowler. His bowling arm would certainly appear from above the sightscreen. Unfortunately, when I spoke to him, he had no interest in the game, and no-one else in the vicinity seemed to, either. As can also be seen, there are suggestions of cross-breeding in those parts.

In a future post, I shall show, irrefutably, how Neolithic Orcadians exported the game of cricket to the Ancient Egyptians, in about 4,000 BC. How the game thrived in Egypt for many centuries, until climate change led to a deterioration of pitches to such an extent that it became impossible to play on even prepared surfaces and 'drop-in' wickets. And how, in the late eighteenth century, Napoleon sailed there in an attempt to discover the origins of the Englishmen's prowess on the cricket playing fields and their consequential strength on the battlefields of Europe.

MM III